Zufik Ul-Zarraf was the finest carver the world had ever seen. One day, he decided on the masterpiece that would cement his legacy once and for all: he would carve a single pearl into the shape of the globe in such detail that it would include a miniscule pearl house with a miniscule Zufik sitting at his bench. He knew that no mortal tool could possibly produce such minutiae, and so he paid evil men to bring him the left hands and hearts of seventy conjoined twins. These he sacrificed to Those Below for a knife as ephemeral as the dying sigh of a just-born babe. With this, he created his masterwork, the Microcosmic Pearl. But the sacrifice had merely sufficed to get the attention of the dark powers. The moment Zufik finished the Pearl, he was transformed into a tiny version of himself inside the carved facsimile of his house. On pain of unimaginable torture, he was to carve yet another pearl in the likeness of the tiny globe he now inhabited, only to be transformed into an even tinier likeness once the work was finished. Forevermore he carved, until even the Almighty lost sight of him.